


i still need you here

by silverkatana



Category: Super Junior
Genre: Fluff and Angst, Getting Back Together, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-01-04
Updated: 2019-01-04
Packaged: 2019-10-04 06:31:52
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,756
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17299535
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/silverkatana/pseuds/silverkatana
Summary: (i'm on my way.)





	i still need you here

The autumn that comes colours the city in swirling shades of red-orange and gold, and the grey sidewalks are filled with the daily hurried whirlwind of people in long beige coats and lowered heads scrolling through websites on their handphones while making their ways here and there. It is a beautiful sight, really, accompanied by more pleasant weather compared to the blazing hot plague of summer, yet as he gazes out of the window and rests his gaze upon the familiar scene his heart goes heavy in his chest.

 

Autumn is a beautiful season, one of Jungsoo’s favourites - the cooler breezes upon his skin nearing the winter months and the fluttering of green-turned-orange leaves to the ground like a gentle descending dance has its special way of bringing out all the nostalgia and pensiveness that he’s somehow kept pent up within him most of the time; it’s perfect for taking a step back from his otherwise busy schedule and revelling in the peaceful silence, paired with a cup of warm coffee or two.

 

Jungsoo lets a sigh escape his lips as he raises the white porcelain cup to his mouth to sip at his coffee; as much as he appreciates autumn, it also has a knack of bringing up all the memories he’s tried to kept hidden away in the furthest corner of his subconscious in hopes of forgetting they ever existed.

 

After all, he reflects with a bitter smile playing upon his features as he allows his eyes to stray just a little to the framed picture sitting at the edge of his table that he hasn’t quite gotten around to throwing out yet, autumn was the same month that he met Heechul.

 

He supposes that in the end, it would be impossible to erase all the traces that Heechul has left imprinted in his memory. It’s difficult to get rid of something that affected you so much that it  _ became _ an integral part of you at some point - it’s hard to simply  _ forget _ someone who you loved with all your heart, soul, and more - it’s impossible to dismiss him as a shooting star when at some point he was an entire galaxy across the sky.

 

He remembers all of it clearly, so clearly, more clearly than what he remembers of the morning’s breakfast or what clothes he wore the day before. From the day that they first met, wearing those long autumn coats (he was in a pale beige, Heechul wore bright red), to the days that they spent together, drinking coffee in hidden-away side shops (Heechul liked his with milk, he didn’t, not that much), to the days they began to stray apart, coming home to empty greetings and barely-there smiles (he never knew how different “hello’s” could sound when they weren’t genuine), to the days that the pieces all fell apart and they couldn’t pick it back up anymore, watching in a dazed standstill as Heechul slipped his hand into a girl’s and tangled his fingers in her silk-like hair and leaned into the lips that were probably a million times softer than his.

 

He remembers all of it clearly, from the way Heechul cried into his shoulder at three in the morning because they shouldn’t be together and no one could know, from the way he choked back the tears building in every fibre of his being when Heechul turned to walk away with a girl who he could be together with, who everyone could know about, and never spared him another glance.

 

That was at the end of spring.

 

Jungsoo furrows his eyebrows, draining off the last sips of coffee. He misses Heechul; he always does, but in the autumn months when he’s not working himself to death the memories flicker by in his brain more prominent than ever. He misses Heechul - he misses the days of laughing together, being free together, before they began hiding away into their own shells and before they began to care what the rest of the world thought.

 

He wonders if Heechul misses him too.

 

He wonders if Heechul is spending the autumn months with a girl now, with happy parents and jealous friends asking him when he’s going to get married, wonders if Heechul is still wearing that terribly outstanding red coat, wonders if Heechul’s drinking the same coffee that he used to drink with Jungsoo with a different person.

 

He wonders if Heechul is warm this autumn. He wonders if Heechul’s heart and mind is finally at peace - the same type of peace that he could never quite achieve when he was with Jungsoo. He wonders if Heechul has finally found the person who he does not have to hide away with, the person who the rest of the world thought he looked good with, the person he didn’t have to be ashamed of being with. He wonders if Heechul still remembers him, wonders what Heechul would say if he knew Jungsoo was still hung up over their memories in the growing chill of autumn.

 

He wonders if Heechul still thinks of him, too.

 

He wonders if Heechul has erased him from his memory just like how Jungsoo has tried to erase Heechul from his own, and he wonders if Heechul has failed, like trying to rub away white chalk stains from two years back on a blackboard, and he wonders if Heechul has deleted his number too (yet Jungsoo still remembers Heechul’s number, every last digit) with it being replaced by the contact details of girls he’s been talking to, and he wonders if it was easier for Heechul than it was for him.

 

He wonders if Heechul ever wished he could dial his number again, just one last time, too.

 

Is love supposed to feel like this? Like he’s being torn apart from all corners but being wonderfully placed back together all at the same time? Like he’s supposed to feel broken somewhere in the depths of his heart but as the tears began to roll down his lips curve into the faintest of smiles because Heechul’s smiling at last?

 

Like knowing that everything has already come to an end but not wanting to let go even after having put his heart and mind at ease after saying goodbye?

 

_ I hope you’re happy, wherever you are, with whatever girl you’re with,  _ Jungsoo thinks as he stares out the window, and in the corner of his mind he can almost imagine Heechul breathing out on the glass and drawing silly figures on the clouded surface with a child-like grin. In that moment, he misses Heechul more than ever, he misses the way they used to laugh and love before they got too scared of the world, his heart swells in his chest and all the wistfulness and sorrow and bittersweet delight that courses through him simultaneously is so strong that it is almost tangible, causing a burning sensation to sting the back of his throat and for chills that aren’t caused by the autumn temperature to kiss his skin.

 

He supposes that now, a year after they met, he has let go of Heechul, has stored the precious memories away into more of a  _ thank you for the past _ kind of category in his brain instead of an  _ if only we had been something more _ kind of wishful category; he supposes that he really should begin to step away from both his house and his work more often to actually meet people, lest his parents nag him about having an absolutely nonexistent love life - honestly, he has reached this same conclusion months ago, and yet autumn does have its funny way of making him more sentimental and less hung up over his work. Perhaps he will try to meet some nice people, people who make him laugh like how Heechul did (or at least somewhat like it), in the same season that he managed to meet Heechul in.

 

The ringing sound of his phone cuts through his thoughts, and in an absentminded grab he reaches for the device, assuming that it would either be a work call or a call from his mother checking him on him. 

 

His brain registers it before he can even lay his eyes properly upon the string of numbers displayed on his phone screen.

 

He knows that it is Heechul’s number before his brain can even process it.

 

And his finger is swiping right across his screen to answer the call before his mind can warn him to halt.

 

There’s a moment of silence, the static crackling of the phone, before he speaks - a shaky breath, unsteady words, nervous tension, “H - hello? Heechul?”

 

It is the first time that Heechul’s name has rolled off his tongue in a long time, but it still sounds and feels the same.

 

“Yeah.” He hears Heechul exhaling heavily on the other side of the line, the faintest of sniffles, and uneven breathing; he doesn’t know whether Heechul’s heart is pounding in his chest the way his is, or if Heechul has called him by mistake, or - 

 

He stops allowing his mind to stray away. 

 

“Are you okay?” he probes tentatively, a quiet euphemism for  _ why are you calling me?,  _ “Did you dial the wrong number?”

 

“No,” Heechul is quick to respond, a hurried word forced out, and he clears his throat a little before he continues, “Jungsoo, today was supposed to be our one-year anniversary, you know?”

 

Jungsoo stills.

  
For a moment, the world stops spinning around him, and all he can see is the blurred kaleidoscope of red and gold outside his window through his tear-filled eyes that remind him of the first day he met Heechul, and all he can hear is Heechul’s voice resonating in his head still as familiar as he remembers.

 

“You remembered?” he whispers out.

 

“Of course I did.”

 

Jungsoo goes silent for a brief moment, not knowing what to think or say - how could he? In the end, he blurts out something that he never meant to say aloud, “I thought you forgot about me.”

 

There’s a soft chuckle on the other end. “How could I?” Heechul exclaims with a barely-present fondness in his tone that makes Jungsoo’s heart do funny little things in his chest, and Heechul’s voice drops to a tone so low Jungsoo can barely hear even with his phone’s speaker on, “How could I when you were the best thing that I ever knew?”

 

“What?”

 

Heechul laughs in the way that he does when he’s embarrassed - Jungsoo can picture his face, a wide grin plastered across and stubbornly refuting everything with the faintest of blushes across his cheeks, “I’m an idiot, Jungsoo.”

 

It is the first time since they parted that Jungsoo has heard Heechul say his name, and god, it is beautiful still.

 

“I’m sorry, but what?”

 

Now Heechul’s voice is quiet and trembling ever-so-slightly in the way that it does when he’s trying to keep his emotions from spilling into his tone, “I said I’m a damn idiot, Jungsoo, I’m an idiot.”

 

“Why?” 

 

_ I am the idiot for never telling you it’s okay to take a stand against the world, I am the idiot for letting you walk away with a girl and never trying to call you back, I am the idiot because you were always so brave and outspoken and yet I let the cruelty of the world crush that confidence into nothingness _ -

 

“Because I let you go, damn it,” Heechul answers, and for the second time in the afternoon Jungsoo feels his heart momentarily stop working in his chest, “I let you go because I was scared, and it was terrifying to feel scared when I’ve only ever always thought I was right, and I ran away to girls because the world said it was  _ right _ , and - fucking hell, Jungsoo, every pretty face I’ve been with since I left has been nothing but a shell to me, another person to compare to you and another person that I realise just isn’t  _ good enough _ because she isn’t  _ you _ .”

 

_ It’s not your fault _ , he tries to say, but the words don’t leave his throat, and he remains quiet as Heechul continues speaking, his words getting more entangled the more he lets emotions spill into his voice.

 

“You were the best thing that ever fucking happened to me and I left just like that, a damn cheater, a damn idiot who played with your feelings like you didn’t mean the fucking  _ world _ to me, someone who ran away with a girl because he was too cowardly, and I can’t believe I only realised how much you meant after going on dates with so many girls I lost count because I could never find anyone who was anything like you.” Heechul pauses for breath and draws a deep, ragged one in, before he whispers, tone cracked and broken and quite possibly the most heartbreaking thing that Jungsoo has ever known, “We should’ve been celebrating our anniversary, Jungsoo, we should’ve. But I fucked up, I fucked up so badly, and damn it, can you tell me just one thing?”

 

“What is it?” he breathes.

 

“What do I do now that I’ve lost you and I still you need you here?” Heechul asks.

 

Time passes faster than Jungsoo thinks is realistically possible, and the next thing he knows he’s thrown on the same pale beige coat he wore three hundred and sixty-five days ago, and he’s seated in the car that he knows he’s terrible at driving but as he turns the corner out of the parking lot he realises that the ache that is gnawing away at his heart has granted him driving skills that he never quite knew he possessed.

 

“Jungsoo?” Heechul speaks, voice all cracked and weary, “Can you answer me? That one question is all I need.”

 

“I’m on my way.”

 

He has to blink back the tears, force them away from clouding his vision, because he’s driving along the roads and turning all the right corners on the way to Heechul’s house, the same way he remembers from a little less than one year ago.

 

“I’m on my way,” he repeats into the phone, fifteen minutes later when he pulls into the parking lot of Heechul’s apartment and realises that Heechul still hasn’t hung up.

 

“Okay.”

 

He half-stumbles, half-runs out of his car and rushes to dial Heechul’s apartment number, his fingers lightly touching the keypad, the metal feeling cool and familiar under his skin. 

 

_ I’m on my way - _

 

The door creaks open, and for the first time since Heechul turned away and never looked back, he lets his gaze trail over Heechul’s face, all puffy-eyed from crying, messy hair strewn across his forehead, but just as beautiful as he last remembers.

 

_ \- so please tell me that your words aren’t a lie. _

 

He searches Heechul’s gaze, the tears that shine behind his widened eyes, and all he can find is the truth, the same light that he saw one year ago in the midst of a swirl of red-orange and gold.

 

“Why are you here?” Heechul murmurs, as though disbelieving, as though thinking that Jungsoo is simply a hallucination, a figment of imagination that has come to life for the most fleeting of moments.

 

Jungsoo reaches out to cup Heechul’s cheek, and Heechul leans into the touch; it feels exactly as Jungsoo remembers, and Heechul closes his eyes as though embracing the fact that it is reality before he looks up at Jungsoo and whispers out, “Will you still love me? Can you?”

 

He does not even have to think before he responds, a smile beginning to etch its way across his facial features. “Yes.”

 

“Even after all this?”

 

“Of course.” Jungsoo’s touch is soft against Heechul’s skin, and when their lips touch it is the most perfect moment that the two of them have ever known, as though some form of cosmic realignment has taken place, like a galaxy reclaiming its rightful place in the universe amongst all the temporal shooting stars and comets, and it is the most  _ right  _ thing that they have ever felt.

 

Jungsoo pulls back for air, and in the next moment Heechul leans forward and captures his lips in a second kiss as though it’s all he’s ever wanted for the past year, and Jungsoo can’t help but smile into the kiss because he’d choose this, now or one year later or ten centuries later, every single time, because it is worth it if it is for Heechul.

 

“Always.”

  
  
  


**Author's Note:**

> first fic of 2019! hope you enjoyed


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